Fun Sources of Vitamin C

As a public service, I feel it is important to advise my readers of a way that they can avoid scurvy. In my family, one such method was to brew what we called "Payne Tea", after my mother's maiden name. This pulpy combination of lots of squeezed lemons and super-sweet iced tea is perhaps better known as an Arnold Palmer. But here are four more fun and tasty methods of getting a little of the old Vitamin C into your system.

A while back I got The Roommate hooked on lemon sorbet, and now, much like the father in So I Married An Axe Murderer, she craves it fortnightly. On this rare occasion I had two pints in the freezer at the same time.

Archer Farms Meyer Lemon Sorbet
Darker yellow, almost orange in color. It has more of a lemon flavor that you associate with lemon meringue pie than the fruit itself, and because of the more mellow Meyer lemon influence, the profile leans more towards orange. Not very tart, but sweet and full of bright citrus flavor.

Häagen-Dazs Zesty Lemon Sorbet
In my opinion this is the clear winner, because it's got a nice sour and bitter edge to it. Very tart and crisp without causing the old face pucker. It encapsulates all the various flavors of a lemon and the peel with the cool, refreshing character of sorbet.

Now on to the cocktails! I've got a pair thrown side by side. On the left is the...

Orange Blossom Cocktail
1 part Gin
1 part Sweet Red Vermouth
1 part Orange Juice

And on the right we have the simpler version...

Adirondack Cocktail
1 part Gin
1 part Orange Juice

Although both of these are old school classics that go back over a hundred years, they are two of the laziest cocktails ever committed to paper. Stir? Shake? Who cares, just combine and imbibe. Working from the bottom up, the Adirondack* is just a more herbal Screwdriver, and the Orange Blossom is a smoother version of the Adirondack. Sweet Red Vermouth, while not often enjoyed on its own in this country, is a great mellowing agent for many cocktails, and deserves more respect. All criticism aside, both are quite tasty, and while they're not the kind of impressive cocktails you might serve for company, they're fun enough to accompany a movie or a book. Serve over ice to prolong the experience and further smooth out the flavors.


*I've spent many nights sleeping outdoors on various camping trips, long drives, and other unique and interesting circumstances. Yet out of all of them, I always thought that one of the most pointless was the Adirondack shelter. It's a cabin with a wall missing. In the summer, you get more of a breeze sleeping outside in the open. In the winter, you're better off in a tent or something that's fully enclosed. The only advantage of the Adirondack is that it keeps the rain off, as long as the rain isn't blowing in through the big missing wall. It doesn't keep you warm, doesn't keep the bugs out, hell, deer could wander in and bed down with you.

I've slept out in the open on top of a mesa in New Mexico during a hailstorm. Yet I still consider the Adirondack to be the worst camping solution ever.